Can't access drives after installing and uninstalling GNOME

I had permanently mounted two internal hard drives following this guide some time ago. Lately I decided to try out both Pantheon and GNOME (disliked both, uninstalled them and stuck with MATE), which revoked my write permissions for both of my drives.

Example
josh@Mercury ~> mkdir /mnt/THINGS/example
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/mnt/THINGS/example’: Permission denied
josh@Mercury ~ [1]> mkdir /mnt/PROJECTS/example
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/mnt/PROJECTS/example’: Permission denied
josh@Mercury ~ [1]> 

I’ve tried using chmod and chown both as root and using sudo to no avail, and the fstab entry is the same as it was when I first mounted the drives. I speculate that either one of the two DEs I temporarily installed might have changed something I need to reset, but I have no idea where to look or what it might be.

Here's my /etc/fstab, if it's of any help.
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a device; this may
# be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices that works even if
# disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system>             <mount point>  <type>  <options>  <dump>  <pass>
UUID=48821955-656b-4061-bffd-a1eaeb1241d1 swap           swap    defaults   0 0
UUID=2f962dd5-4597-49a9-97e1-588b0cb93f64 /              btrfs   subvol=/@,defaults,noatime,compress=zstd 0 0
UUID=2f962dd5-4597-49a9-97e1-588b0cb93f64 /var/cache     btrfs   subvol=/@cache,defaults,noatime,compress=zstd 0 0
UUID=2f962dd5-4597-49a9-97e1-588b0cb93f64 /var/log       btrfs   subvol=/@log,defaults,noatime,compress=zstd 0 0
UUID=c2251f4f-d653-4f18-8a98-76178aa871a6 /home          btrfs   defaults,noatime,compress=zstd 0 0
tmpfs                                     /tmp           tmpfs   defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
UUID=32D9-1C12                            /mnt/PROJECTS  exfat   noatime,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.device-timeout=10,x-systemd.idle-timeout=1min 0 2
UUID=5A59-AD07                            /mnt/THINGS    exfat   noatime,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.device-timeout=10,x-systemd.idle-timeout=1min 0 2

Since those are exfat filesystems, they don’t support POSIX permissions so you can use tools like chmod on them.

You need to mount them with permission for your user account. Try adding uid=username,gid=username to the options. Replace username with your actual username.

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or uid=1000,gid=1000

why not simply remove the last 2 lines from fstab and mount with gparted? Normally that would make default entry’s wich should work.

Well, only if your uid and gid are 1000 which they may or may not be…

Since those are exfat filesystems, they don’t support POSIX permissions so you can use tools like chmod on them.

Thought it had something to do with that. I formatted them before I switched to Linux, so dealing with exFat has been a pain in the neck sometimes. Thanks for the help.

why not simply remove the last 2 lines from fstab and mount with gparted? Normally that would make default entry’s wich should work.

I need these drives permanently mounted, as the last thing I need is Krita/Blender/LibreOffice’s mini file browser telling me it’s unmounted or non-existant when I’ve gotta save a file. Plus it’s just simpler to directly edit a file that tells my computer what to do with these two pieces of spinning rust than to go through a GUI.

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